Interesting article in the NY Times on the hopes and dreams of Marvel Studios:

Until now, Hollywood’s major studios have paid to license Marvel characters to create blockbuster franchises — including the three “Spider-Man” hits, which have raked in close to $2.5 billion at the global box office for Sony Pictures — and 20th Century Fox’s “X-Men” and “Fantastic Four” movies. The latest, “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer,” took in an estimated $57 million in its opening this weekend.

But Marvel makes relatively little money from these box-office bonanzas, because of unfavorable deals struck in the 1990s. A Lehman Brothers analysis calculated that Marvel made just $62 million from the first two “Spider-Man” films.

By making his own movies based on other Marvel characters, Mr. Maisel hopes to transform his division of Marvel Entertainment into a true filmmaking brand, maintaining control from script to release, keeping all the profits for the company and building a film library, while using someone else’s capital.

Comics